Page 42 of Alec’s Dream

What I did know was, I felt like shit.

And after I got my kids down for the night, I cried myself to sleep for the second night in a row.

I did the right thing being honest and walking away from Alec. Not that there’d been much to walk away from. But it hurt like hell. And what hurt worse was, he’d let me.

For a Thursday, the day sucked.

Normally, the day before a Friday was met with happy vibes the weekend was approaching. But of course I had shitty luck. Therefore, after barely sleeping the last four nights, my patience was thin when Doug called to tell me he had to go out of town and wouldn’t be home for “a while.” When I asked how long a while was, he told me to mind my own business and hung up.

I took the call to mean he wouldn’t be taking the kids on his next weekend. That was fine by me. As unpleasant as Doug barking at me was, that was not the shitty part.

No, that came hours later.

And when it came, it rocked me.

14

“Who pissed in your Wheaties?” Jameson joked as he walked into the conference room.

Alec looked up from the report he was reading to see his friend smirking. A lot had changed over the last few years—Jameson smiling was one of them. The man used to wear a perpetual scowl.

“Chasin back from Boston?” Alec asked instead of answering.

“Dropped off the skip in Baltimore. Depending on traffic, he should be back in about two hours. You didn’t answer me.”

“That’s because I’m ignoring you.”

Jameson snorted and pushed. “What’s goin’ on? You’ve been pissed all week.”

Alec studied his friend who had once been an island unto himself, emotionally closed off, and physically distant to almost everyone. But then Kennedy came into his life and the man had changed—completely. Alec was grateful to the woman for showing Jameson there was good in the world.

“Not pissed. Not really, anyway. I thought…fuck, I don’t know what I thought. But it doesn’t matter—shit didn’t work out.”

That was a total lie, it did matter. It mattered a fuck of a lot, but Macy had made herself clear, and as much as he wanted to barge into her life and take her by storm, he couldn’t. He couldn’t get her impassioned plea out of his head.

How many times over the last five days had he heard her whispered words?

You’d build me up. It’d feel so good and I’d be so high, I wouldn’t survive the fall.

Fuck! She slayed him.

He wanted to build her up. Put her up high on a pedestal and erase all the shit her ex had planted. He’d been certain he wanted Macy, but as soon as the words had left her mouth, fear had gripped him—it was the fall that worried him. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to catch her and thinking about leaving her broken paralyzed him.

So he let her walk away. But, he still hadn’t stopped looking into ways to make Doug stop playing his games with his kids.

“What didn’t work out?”

“Nine-one-one call came in,” Nixon shouted jogging past the conference room door. “Macy’s house.”

“Fuck!” Alec surged from his seat and ran after Nixon, catching him on the street. “SITREP?”

“Jonny’s en route.”

Alec jumped into Nixon’s truck, and as soon as Nix pulled away from the curb, he called Kennedy and asked her to go to the daycare and pick up Jocelyn. Once that was taken care of, he turned back to his friend.

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. We were discussing the recent break-ins, when the call came in. Do you have any idea why Macy’s at home instead of at work?”